What is Planned Obsolescence?

7 months ago

We live in a society in which the culture of buying, throwing, buying has been imposed on us.

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A few days ago they broadcast an interesting documentary on TV, about programmed obsolescence, which said that we live in a society in which the culture of buying, throwing, buying has been imposed on us; everything that is manufactured includes an expiration date imposed by the manufacturer, which makes our objects unusable after a while, making it essential to replace them with something new, “better”.

This generates great benefits, it makes the world economy move, but it has an important counterpart, it generates huge quantities of garbage that nobody wants. The reasoning of the inventors of the system seems irrefutable. If things were done that lasted forever, there would come a time when everyone would have our product, and it would not be necessary to manufacture another, the world economy would sink …

Although we could do something indestructible and durable, useful for everyone, it is unlikely that we could supply every citizen of the planet, so there would always be a market to reach. But even in the case of reaching that point, in which we have already supplied the entire planet, would not we have already generated enough benefits for our entire lives?

I am not totally against the programmed obsolescence, in fact it is a system that allows to keep the factories working, the researchers working, in such a way that the system feeds back to the whole chain, since the producers themselves are also consumers and consumers are part of the production scheme (from operators to managers). The only point where this whole theory of programmed obsolescence falters is in the waste generated, which does not seem to be a problem while contaminating other territories.

But this does not have to be necessarily so, the solution is in nature, the solution is to investigate so that waste is raw material. Recycling, which can become the business of the future, using materials that are 100% reusable should be the goal. Right now, many recyclable things are built in high percentages in theory, but they end their useful life in a dump in the third world. Avoiding that would undoubtedly lead us to a better path, a path of reconciliation with our battered planet, a truly sustainable economy.